Courtesy of Pam Martens
Congressman Jim Himes (D-CT)
Jim Himes, a Democrat from Connecticut, chairs the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy. That Subcommittee has just announced a hearing slated for September 23 at 10:00 a.m. titled: “Lending in a Crisis: Reviewing the Federal Reserve’s Emergency Lending Powers During the Pandemic and Examining Proposals to Address Future Economic Crises.” The list of witnesses for this hearing has not yet been announced.
There’s good reason for every American to be nervous about the real agenda of this hearing.
For starters, Jim Himes is a 12-year veteran of Goldman Sachs. Second, he lives in Greenwich, Connecticut – the tony enclave of hedge fund billionaires. In addition, six of his top 10 donors over his career in Congress are the mega banks on Wall Street. (See chart below.)
There is also the fact that Himes was a co-sponsor of legislation known as HR 922, a bill written by Citigroup to repeal the part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation known as the “push out rule.” Under Dodd-Frank, the rule would have pushed out the most dangerous forms of derivatives from the federally-insured banking units of the Wall Street mega banks. While HR 922 was never taken up by the Senate, its language was stuffed into the must-pass spending legislation known as the Cromnibus in December of 2014. It thus became law and is responsible for today’s current derivatives nightmare on Wall Street. (See our detailed report on this Wall Street giveaway.)
Neither Wall Street nor its front men are happy with the current constraints on the Fed’s ability to lavish trillions of dollars in bailout money on the Wall Street mega banks every time they blow themselves up with their latest innovations in financial weapons of mass destruction.
…
